When I was little, somebody had told me about this thing… that you can do, uh… supposedly, it’s supposed to help you predict how many kids you’re going to have when you’re older. Um… so what you do is, you make a fist, a tight fist, with your thumb over your other fingers and your hand… like, your palm is facing up, but you’re in a fist… and then you… with your other hand, squeeze the part of your palm that’s open, under your pinkie, and then there’s supposed to be these little balls or bulges or something that appear on your wrist… uh, and that’s the number of kids you’re going to have. And I think… I think the left hand is how many boys you’re going to have, and the right hand is girls. And I… I think it worked for me. I don’t remember if it was exactly right from when I was little, but I think it was pretty close to… to what I ended up having.

Thoughts:

The fact that this is something taught to girls at a young age reveals that there is a societal/cultural pressure on females to have children, and to start thinking about having children and fulfilling this social role from an early age. The desire to “predict” the number and gender of children a girl will have is perhaps a way for her to start preparing to have these children, as she enters her pubescent years.